DISSOLVED OXYGEN CONTROL STRATEGY COMPARISON FOR AN ACTIVATED SLUDGE
PROCESS
Vincent J. Turmel, David Williams and Karl 0. Jones
Liverpool John Moores University, Control Systems Research Group, School of Engineering, Byrom Street,
Liverpool L3 3AF, UK.
There are increasingly important financial incentives
and environmental considerations for improving the
treatment of wastewater from domestic and industrial
users before being released into the environment.
Insufficient levels of dissolved oxygen prevent the
successful degradation of organic matter present,
whereas too high a level causes settling problems, in
addition to the waste of energy and hence cost
efficiency. Therefore, the need for controlling dissolved
oxygen is of great importance. This paper presents
simulation results providing comparison of controller
performances for three control methods (PID, Fuzzy
logic and self-tuning control) for a wastewater process
with typical influent flow pattern. The set-point to the
sludge flow control system is optimised using an
objective function including released water quality and
financial running cost.
Keywords: Process Control, Simulation,
Biotechnology.
INTRODUCTION
The biological treatment of wastewater, by the activated
sludge process (ASP), is widely used: improvement in
process operation can be achieved by enhanced control
of aeration and activated sludge flows.
The process involves a culture of bacteria and other
organisms which, in the presence of sufficient air,
multiplies and feeds on organic material within the
sewage, oxidising it to carbon dioxide, water and
nitrogen compounds. Recycled sewage, rich in
microorganisms, is added to the influent flow, in what is
referred to as mixed liquor, along with additional
oxygen required for efficient oxidation. Often,
denitrification precedes oxidation of the liquor in order
to degrade the organic elements. The liquor is clarified
in the final settling tank to allow the release of clean
water into the environment, while the sludge is
thickened for recycling or disposal.
UKACC International Conference on CONTROL ‘98, 1-4 September 1998,
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Dissolved oxygen is an important parameter affecting
the growth of the different types of microorganisms in
the process. The ASP is a non-linear, time-varying
process with variable time-delay. The on-line
investigation of control strategies on an ASP is
impractical, while simulation offers the ability to
compare a range of methods under a variety of operating
conditions.
SewedSewage
Final
I , n I sludge
Recycled acti?ated sludge L A B - +
Figure 1 : Activated sludge process
European legislation is being introduced which requires
higher standards for treated water. This, in conjunction
with a greater sensitivity to operation cost, is driving
forward the quest for improved instrumentation and
control systems in the industry. Aeration is a prime
target for financial gain as in some cases up to 80% of
operation costs are found there. Surplus sludge is also a
major problem since it requires disposal, and in the
immediate future disposal at sea will be forbidden
requiring the use of more costly alternatives, mainly
incineration.
The objective of a control scheme is to regulate the
dissolved oxygen level within an aeration tank by
adjusting the airflow rates. It is common industrial
practice to use constant aeration, which means over-
aerating at some periods and under-aerating at others;
which is a waste of energy and also detrimental to the
optimum operation of the plant.
SIMULATION
The work was carried out using a computer simulation
of an activated sludge plant, based on Activated Sludge
Model 1 of the International Association on Water
Quality [IAWQ] (Henze et al, 1987). The model was
augmented by a clarifier inspired by Lessard & Beck
Conference Publication No. 455,O IEE, 1998
 (1 993) and a realistic estimation of the suspended solids
concentration found in the effluent (Dupont & Henze,
1992). The multi-input, multi-output activated sludge
model, has been successfully implemented within
MATLAB. The system simulates control of aeration in
an aeration lane represented by 3 tanks (Figure I), and
the regulation of the concentrations of solids in the
aeration and clarifier tanks.
The dissolved oxygen ‘reading’ is filtered with a first
order transfer function simulating an industry standard
dissolved oxygen probe, with a 3 minute time constant.
Also, a normally distributed white noise of 1% is added
to the measurement.
The input data used represents a typical week with
weekly and diurnal flow and concentration patterns
(Figures 2 and 3). It is based on real data (Spanjers et
al, 1997) and incorporates two storm events (day 1 and
day 4). The average flow is 20 000 m3d-’and total COD
of 300 mgl-’ for ii population equivalent of 100 000.
The two storms produce different effects even though, in
both cases, the flow increases 3 fold to 60 000 m3day-’.
In the first storm, ithe soluble substrate decreases by 15
% while the particulate substrate increases 4 folds.
During the second storm event, the soluble substrate is
decreased by 15% but the particulate substrate is
reduced to half its thy weather value simulating the wash
out that happened during the first storm.
MluentFbw
, D I generalised predictive control method, consisting of
0 1 2 3 4 5
Time (days)
Figure 2: Influent flow rate
I ntluent concentrations
0 1 2 3 4
T h e (days)
5 8
Figure 3 : Influent flow concentration
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CONTROLLERS
Three controllers have been investigated for aeration
control: a simple PID controller since it is an industry
standard, widely available and is the most likely system
to be implemented on a real plant. A Fuzzy logic
controller has also been developed owing to its
increasing interest in industry, PLC’s with fuzzy
capabilities are available even if not yet widely used.
Finally, a self-tuning coIltroller was implemented
because it is a technique that is likely to have an impact
in the near future to accommodate non-linearity and time
variance.
The flow control consists of a PID controller with a very
slow time constant since variations in recycled sludge
flow are a major disturbance to the aeration, and a
second PID for surplus sludge flow control.
The control of aeration, in the 2 aerobic tanks, is
independent fiom each other, according to the dissolved
oxygen measurement given by a DO probe placed in
each tank. The sample time used was 2 minutes.
A standard PID controller is used. Its main drawback is
the fine-tuning which is difficult. A rough tuning can be
achieved rapidly by standard methods such as Ziegler-
Nichols, but fine-tuning is a long and delicate operation,
difficult to perform on an on-line system.
The Fuzzy controller is using the error and change of
error as an input and change of aeration rate as an
output. The only difference between the controllers
used in tank 1 and 2 is the level of the change of
aeration rate, for a given error.
The self-tuning controller (STC) is based on the
8 7
local linearisation of the process into a model which is
used for control and is constantly updated in order to
track the non-linearity of the process.
RESULTS
The level of dissolved oxygen, obtained with the
different controllers, as well as the error from the set-
point are displayed in Figures 4,6 and 8, while Figures
5,7 and 9 show the aeration rate required.
It should be noted that had these results been obtained
7 on-line, they would have been more than adequate and
would represent a major improvement over current
implementation. If the initial ‘start-up’ phase is omitted,
the maximum error for the fuzzy logic controller is of
little more than 5.5%. However, this is an extreme
value, most error being less than 2.5%. The PID
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 controller presents a maximum error close to 3.5% while
the self-tuning controller error is less than 2.5%.
The STC presents the least variation of the dissolved
oxygen concentration (Figure 8). The PID and hzzy
logic control (Figure 4 and 6 respectively) offer quite
similar performances except during the fist storm event
where the PID responds slightly better than the FLC.
The control signals (i.e. the aeration rate) are also very
similar. However, the aeration rate delivered by the
STC is noisier: the controller tries to correct the
measurement noise (it disappears if the noise is
removed). This requires further investigation, since fast
variations of the aeration rate, have the undesirable
effect of excessive valves movements. The PID and
FLC seem less prone to this behaviour.
O p t i ~ i § a t ~ oofnactivated sludge flows and costs
There is a real process problem to find measurements,
which can be used to implement a control system.
Activated sludge concentration in the final aeration tank
is important to settling and is assumed measured on-line.
Too low or too high a concentration brings settling
problems, translated in high suspended concentration in
the released water. Suspended solids concentrations in
the settled sludge are also monitored in order to control
the surplus sludge flow.
An optimisation algorithm (single variable
minimisation) seeks the optimal compromise to maintain
high quality effluent at the lower cost possible. This
evaluation is made every two hours, sludge flows being
manipulated delicately, i.e. slowly, as they are a major
source of disturbance for the aeration stage. From
simulation results shown in Figure 10, it can be seen that
the influence of the opthisation is not noticeable until
half a day for suspended solids and at the price of an
increased treatment cost. This changes afler day 2
where significant gains are achieved both for effluent
quality and operation cost.
TABLE 1- Ouantitative Benefit from opthisation
I 7days I Last5days
[ Cost benefit I 23.71 /day 1 &6.94/day
I S ~ i ~ ~ r o v e ~I e0.46mgA
nt I 0.53mgll
The benefits are clear, nevertheless they are small. It
will be difficult to be convinced to adopt an automation
program on a gain of 27lday or the reduction in quantity
of suspended solids released of 11kg/day. However,
these values represent respectively 2.8% and 4.3% of
cost and released suspended solids respectively. The
main savings, both financially and in quality, are
realised in the aeration stage (Turmel et al, 1997).
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CONCLUSION
To summarise, it can be said that the quickest way to
implement a control system for dissolved oxygen
concentration in an activated sludge process would be to
use a self-tuning controller. Overall it presents a good
response to a variety of conditions and offers the
advantage of a certain degree of robustness over the
changes that the process can undergo. A PID controller
can do nearly as well, and has the advantage of
simplicity but does present the problem of parameter
tuning and the lack of adaptability to naturally occurring
process changes. Overall, the fuzzy logic controller
offers performances between the other two controllers
for both complexity and robustness. In particular, the
noise rejection ability is better than for the PID
controller, however, the main problem with the FLC is
rule-base generation.
REFE~~CES
Dupont, P. and Henze, M. 1992, Modelling of
secondary clarifier combined with the activated sludge
model No 1, Water Science & Technology, Vol. 25, No
6, pp 285-300.
Henze M., Grady C.P.L., Gujer W., Marais G.v.R. and
Matsuo T., 1987, Activated sludge model No. l.,
IAWPRC Scientific and 'Technical report No. 1, IAWQ,
London.
Lessard P., and Beck P., 1993, Dynamic modelling of
the activated sludge process: a case study, Water
Research, Vol. 27, No 6, pp 963-978.
Spanjers H., Vanrolleghem P., Nguyen K., Vanhooren H
and Patry G.G., 1997, Towards a simulation-benchmark
for evaluating respirometry-based control strategies,
Proceedings 7* IAWO international workshop:
Instrumentation, control and automation of water and
wastewater treatment and transport systems, 6-9 July,
Brighton, UK.
Turmel V.J., Jones KO. and Williams D., 1997,
Optimisation of dissolved oxygen control in an activated
sludge process, Proceedings 2"d Asian Control
Conference, 22-25 July, Seoul, Korea.
I
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 DO (PID controller)

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Figure 4: Dissolved Oxygen Concentration Figure 8: Dissolved Oxygen Concentration

Aeration (PID controller) Aeration (Self-tuning controller)

, 80

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- I

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time (days) Time (days)
Figure 5: Aeration rate with PID controller Figure 9: Aeration rate with self-tuning controller

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Comparison of optimisation effects
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Figure 6: Dissolved Oxygen Concentration Figure 10 : Opthisation Effects

Aeration (Fuzzy controller)

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Figure 7: Aeration rate with fuzzy controller

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